


Dissatisfaction

by dagas isa (dagas_isa)



Category: Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: Deathfic, Gen, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-01
Updated: 2006-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagas_isa/pseuds/dagas%20isa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nooj is on the other side now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissatisfaction

Death wasn't what he thought it would be.

Those years he sought it, he had imagined an oblivion, a sweet nothingness that could forget about, could atone for his sins. He had imagined that the drawing mystery, the inner yearning. He had imagined satisfaction, a fullness to counteract an aching emptiness.

It had been a month since he stepped forward in that raid gone wrong. A month since he stared down that fiend, shouldered his gun and yelled for the young men and women behind him, the ones who would follow a Deathseeker anywhere, to run, to find the exit, regroup and find another way to get the sphere here.

The death, the pain, feeling of being drawn apart had been satisfying. Of the ten soldiers who accompanied him, eight had survived the ruins, and he... It was strange to feel a sharp pain again, refreshing in that one moment the way the dragon's claws had torn him so he could never return. A death of meaning and release, the one he had imagined and longed for.

No. The dissatisfaction had happened afterwards, as he remained tethered to his body, when he heard Lucil and Yuna talking.

"I know it's a special favor lady Yuna, but I would be devastated if the former Meyvn turned into a fiend."

"Of course."

Yuna had stepped forward then, wearing her normal clothing, but with a different air, the one that had made her high-summoner. He could see her struggle, sending someone she had known, someone she had once stopped from dying, but she took that breath, and the step forward, and danced. Gently, she shattered him, opening a gauzy road and nudging him to it. Gently, yes, but with an insistence he could not refuse.

The dissatisfaction had happened when he had arrived. This beautiful Farplane glen, a land more beautiful than anything he had quite known in Spira, though an evening on the Moonflow when he was a boy could perhaps compare. Yet, for the fields of flowers and walls of waterfalls, his new home seemed empty, lifeless. He called and the echo of his voice broke the silence, but only for a moment. Even a flower, he could not pluck one, for they were all the same. And so too, did time pass.

Yet it did not. When the world above touched him, and someone remembered him, Nooj would rise to see the grieving faces. Youth League soldiers who promised to fulfill the mission he had left them. New Yevon soldiers who had opposed him, but still respected the man he was. Even a few Al Bhed, including Gippal, had come to reflect on their memories, though all had seemed uncomfortable.

And through timeless eternity, Nooj waited for these visits, painful amusements, vacations away from solitude.

Lucil had visited him several times. The new Meyvn of the Youth League, she had taken his burden and somehow had softened in her hands. He saw not only spheres of history recovered in her reign, but service as well, for she had nothing to avenge. She told him the plans to expand and set up new bases all over Spira, and Nooj saw, how it would unfold, the good and the bad, from the lonely woman's hands. And if Lucil had picked up on the legacy of Meyvn, she also bore his legacy for aloneness. As each new recruit grew up and beyond the ranks, and touched the world, Lucil would watch with a mother's proudly broken heart. And she, Lucil, would never know any other heart again. For Youth League Meyvn's, Nooj supposed with only a hint of humor, would always long for something, even in death.

So too, had Leblanc, many times over, though he felt the time with her. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a group of her followers, she approached him always with bright red lilies. Yet, Leblanc herself had never seemed so pale, so plain. The heady vibrancy of the woman who had annoyed and warmed him so had disappeared into this fragile looking thing. "I try," she told him once when they were alone, "I try to be how I was before, but without you, I don't know why I should." He saw the front she wore in the above world. The same clothing, the same make up, but with a loss of purpose. And yet...others would follow her too. Her talent, to touch the weary and the outcast, would remain, though it would stay quieter. Of all things, her future satisfied him too, for a little bit. Leblanc, as was her nature, would carry on, marry a man who could play a happy second fiddle to her. And her first child, a son, would be named for him. He nearly laughed, only Leblanc would be to stubborn to just give up her Nooj.

Paine came as well, only once, as if that were enough. Leblanc had just placed the flowers on the floor of the Farplane and turned her back to him, not even enough time to be gone from her heart, when he felt her. She walked past Leblanc, and the two shared a nod, a polite greeting. And then she stood alone, just looking out, looking into him. She didn't actually say anything, or cry, or leave a flower at his face. Paine just watched him, and let him watch her. She didn't cry, and her pale features betrayed nothing of her heart. He watched her future unfold before her, a marriage to Baralai, and a single sorrowful daughter waited in the horizon. His visions were no less specific, no less true than any other.

Yet, as she stood there, watching, his body wanted to fight the wall between the living and the dead. If he could only touch her, he would know something the future couldn't tell him. Nooj reached, grimacing as the wall rejected his hand and fought back against the touch of the living. Of course, she saw him try. Paine's expression darkened with the realization of what he was trying to do, and with tremendous effort of her own, she lifted her palm up to touch his, watching his reaction.

Then, she bowed her head and turned away, her only words in the expanse a whispered, "I miss you." Nooj watched her go, and made a wish that his voice could carry.

"I miss you too!" he called to her retreating figure. Paine turned her head, as if sensing her voice, but then walked back up into the world.

And that's when the dissatisfaction stopped going away.


End file.
